A Family Reconciled

Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133

Perhaps this scenario has played out in your living rooms lately.  You watch the Olympic Games on TV, awed by the variety of humankind gathered in one place for a mutual purpose.  When you see members of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team and the American team congratulating one another and embracing, you say to yourself, “Why can’t it  always be like this–people reaching out to others in gestures of good will?”

But even as we express such a sentiment, we know that governments, politicians, big business interests, and dictators keep the world unsettled.  Power trumps peace almost every time and economic self-interest ignores humanitarian concerns.

Separation and alienation are realities.  Nations war with nations; politicians drive wedges in the electorate; churches splinter over practice and doctrine; and families fall apart.  For many, dissension, rather than reconciliation, is the preferred routine.

But there is another way.  Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the story of Joseph and his family.  Last week’s Old Testament lesson was the account of Joseph, his father’s preferred son, being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers.  After all, why should Joseph, the dreamer and eleventh son, have been given the special coat by their father Jacob?  Jealousy so intense that the young man’s murder was barely averted colored the brothers’ perception of Joseph. 

As you know, after Joseph arrived in Egypt, his ability to interpret dreams, led him to great favor with Pharaoh and he became a wealthy and exceedingly powerful leader.  When, in a dream, Joseph foresaw seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, it was he who ordered that grain be stored in anticipation of the years of drought and starvation.
 
In a moment of supreme poetic justice, the very brother the sons of Jacob sold into slavery becomes the instrument of their salvation.  When famine is imminent, Jacob sends ten of his sons to Egypt to beg for grain to sustain his family.  At the court of Pharaoh, they fail to recognize that the great man standing before them holding their fate in his hands is the very  brother whom they had so viciously mistreated.

Put yourself in Joseph’s position.  He had literally been tossed out of his family–scorned and forever abandoned.   Now, ironically, his brothers grovel before him, as earlier dreams had predicted they would.  They have no idea who he is, never suspecting their useless baby brother would have risen to such heights.  We empathize with Joseph, who has every right to be bitter, angry, vindictive, or, and at the very least, selective in his forgiveness.   He holds all the cards, and, it is a well-known truism that what goes around comes around.

What precedes  today’s part of the story is Joseph’s testing of the brothers.  When they leave for home, he holds one of them hostage to insure they will return with Benjamin, his youngest and only full-blooded brother.  At the same time, however, in a generous gesture, he sends them away with bags full of grain and, unbeknownst to them, with the money they had brought with them to purchase the grain.

Ultimately, we come to today’s powerful and moving passage from Genesis in which Joseph reveals his identity to his astonished family.  Unashamedly, he weeps as he welcomes them unconditionally.

We marvel, along with the brothers, questioning how it is possible for Joseph to forgive their treachery and his enforced isolation from them.  Yet it is clear he has never forgotten them or severed his emotional bonds with family.

Perhaps part of what motivates Joseph to reconcile with his brothers is his acknowledgment that some of the blame for what happened originally may have been his.  Did he take pride in his status as the favored son?  Lord it over his brothers that he didn’t have to work in the fields?  Bug them mightily with his preoccupation with the dream world?     
 
A far more significant motivation, however, is that, with the passage of time, Joseph realizes that he owes his delivery from slavery and his exalted status to God and that God’s ultimate purpose has now been revealed.  Joseph is God’s instrument in his family’s salvation–and the salvation of Egypt.

Whether it is in a community, church, or family, what are some of the factors that result in estrangement?  In the case of Joseph, his brothers’ perception of his being the favored son and their jealousy led to their casting him out.   Such motives are not limited to Old Testament folk.   I recently had a conversation with one of my relatives concerning the division of her mother’s estate.  This woman is having difficulty moving beyond the fact that the will seems to have favored two others of her siblings.

Misunderstandings, alienating behaviors, disappointments, power struggles–all of these factors and more can be causes of alienation and separation . . . if we let them.   We can harbor such resentments, even cling to them as patterns of living; or, like Joseph, we can find grace in our troubles and disappointments and embrace a new way of being.

Easier said than done.  Reconciliation is not simple.  I know this firsthand.  For well over twenty years, we were estranged from the orphaned nephew we had reared.  His adolescent rebellion, our insistence on rules, mutual distrust, and angry words culminated in his leaving home at eighteen and ultimately disappearing into a cult-like group.  He wanted nothing to do with us, and there were long periods of time when we had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

It was painful.  We loved him.  We ate ourselves up with questions about where we had gone wrong and whether we would ever see him again.  As so often happens, communication was part of the problem.  As Robert C. Morris puts it in his article “Listening with the Heart,” we are often “so busy being right we have no time to listen to each other’s souls.”  [Robert C. Morris, “Listening with the Heart,” Weavings, XVIII:4.]

Our nephew eventually left the group he had joined and married a wonderful young woman, whose loving heart was instrumental in bringing us together again.  They and their three darling children came to a family reunion several years ago.  Yes, the first meeting was awkward, tense, strained.  But it was a beginning . . . one that has led to forgiveness and reconciliation.  That which was lost has been restored.  Yes, through the grace of God, just as in Joseph’s case.

What can lead us from separation to togetherness, from alienation to acceptance?  For starters, hear what that modern-day prophet Larry Shoffner has to say: “If you just wait long enough, everything will come out okay.”  Time is, indeed, a huge factor.  Not our time, God’s time.  So is patience.  Openness to rebirth.  A realization that not everyone needs to be like me, value what I value, or respond as I would. 

Sometimes the solution comes when the agony of separation overcomes the habit of continuing the estrangement.  Yes, we swallow pride and, yes, give up our stubborn insistence on being right.  But God is in the journey every step of the way.

Scripture reveals that God is in the business of binding up the broken, gathering the dispersed, salvaging the lost, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and loving the outcast.  He does not want us to live in the tension and loneliness of separation.

As the psalmist tells us with remarkable imagery in Psalm 133:

Oh, how good and pleasant it is,
when brethren live together in unity!
It is like fine oil upon the head
that runs down upon the beard,               
Upon the beard of Aaron,
and runs down the collar of his robe.
It is like the dew of Hermon
that falls upon the hills of Zion.
For there the Lord has ordained the blessing:
life for evermore.

Indeed, it is “good and pleasant” when we live together in unity.  Time, patience, tolerance, love, and forgiveness.  These are the keys. 

Later in the service, we will say together the “Lord’s Prayer.”  And we will come to the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Think about that for a minute.  Perhaps the most important word in that sentence is as.  It is comfortable for us to dwell on “forgive us our trespasses,” but how often do we really hear the rest: “as we forgive those who trespass against us”?

The second part of the sentence implies that we will be forgiven only and until we forgive others.  There can be no peace or unity without this step—genuine forgiveness.  It is Christ who gave us the commandment and he who gave us the example.  We are to love one another.   

Joseph “fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck.  And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him. [Genesis 45:14-15]


Amen.

Laura Shoffner
St. James’ Episcopal Church
August 17,  2008

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